Adopting 100-year-old olive trees breathes new life into Spanish village

“They’re over 500 years old,” says Sira Plana proudly as she points to Oliete’s olive groves, many of which are thriving now thanks to an adoption scheme that has prevented this northeastern Spanish village from dying out.

For an annual fee of 50 euros ($57), some 2,500 sponsors receive photos of their olive tree by mobile phone, along with two liters of olive oil annually.

Along with the satisfaction of knowing their money is helping the local economy and creating jobs, sponsors also get to name their tree.

“We tried to do it in a way that people would get emotionally involved in the project,” said Plana, co-founder of “Adopt an Olive Tree,” standing between trees loaded with ripe olives.

Spain is the world’s largest producer of olive oil and Plana said that when people explain what made them decide to sponsor a tree “in the majority of cases, it is very, very emotional... linked to a relative, a child, grandfather, an olive plantation.”